Review: Korean Travel Literature

Korean Travel Literature by Tae Joon Kim
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I confess I found this book useful mostly as a list of other books I'd like to find and read. It discusses Korean authors who have had something to do with travel over the centuries and dynasties. So, people who were exiled, who got lost abroad, who went on pilgrimages, who traveled within Korea and who were captured. It doesn't really go enough into detail for any of them to really get a sense of what they said or what they wrote about. So basically I am using it as a reference for finding whatever books I can in translation, at least until my Korean gets good enough to read them in Korean (or Chinese characters, as the case may be).


These authors/works have now been added to my wishlist:
Hye Cho's "memoir of a pilgrimage",
The women traveler/writers: Kim Geum-won and Lady Nam,
Yu Kil-chun,
Kim chun tae,
jeong yak yong and jeon yak-jeon (two exiled brothers),
Choe ik-hyeon,
Kim Ryeo,
Choe Bu's "Record of Drifting across the sea",
Kang Hang's "Memorials of a loyal subject" (experiences of a captive in Japan during the Hideyoshi invasion),
Shenyang Reports,
Nogajae's journal,
Damheon's Yanjing memoir,
Jehol diary (already on my list),
Shin Yu-han's "Journal of travel to Japan",
You Hong-june's "My exploration of cultural heritage"

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